STRN Pulls Conservatórias Offline From 8 to 13 June — 279 Conservador Vacancies (38%) and 2,731 Oficial Gaps (55%) Frame the Week-Long Strike as Porto's Predial, Civil and Comercial Counters Drop Behind Minimum Services

The Sindicato dos Trabalhadores dos Registos e Notariado (Union of Registry and Notary Workers, STRN) opened a six-day national strike at 00:00 on Monday 8 June 2026, with action scheduled to run through Saturday 13 June across every conservatória — civil registry (Registo Civil), property registry (Registo Predial) and commercial registry (Registo Comercial) — plus the notary offices the Instituto dos Registos e do Notariado (Institute of Registries and Notaries, IRN) supervises nationwide.

The walkout puts hard numbers on a staffing emergency the union has been escalating for the better part of a year. STRN tallies 279 missing conservadores — the senior registry officers who sign off on titles, marriages and company filings — equivalent to 38% of the total establishment. Behind them, 2,731 oficiais dos registos (registry officials) are absent from the duty roster, or 55% of the staffing structure the IRN itself recognises. The union frames both figures as the proximate cause of the queues, scheduling delays and back-office bottlenecks now visible across the network.

What is closed, what is not

Minimum services apply only to a narrow band of urgent procedures: civil marriages already booked, testaments by parties at imminent risk of death, and priority issuance of citizen-card (Cartão de Cidadão) and passport documents flagged for travel within the week. Everything else is on the picket-line side of the door.

In Porto, the city's Conservatória do Registo Civil, Conservatória do Registo Predial, the Arquivo Central and the Conservatória do Registo Comercial all closed their counters on the first morning of the strike. In Vila Nova de Gaia, conservatórias dropped to minimum services. Lojas do Cidadão hosting registry desks across Greater Lisbon and the Porto metro were running with constraints by mid-morning. Property buyers due to sign deeds (escrituras públicas) this week are being told to call ahead before travelling.

The eleven-point cahier

STRN's platform lists eleven demands. The headline asks are emergency recruitment of the conservador and oficial cohorts the system is short, and full implementation of the Provedor de Justiça's (Ombudsman's) recommendation to close the salary asymmetries between staff doing identical work in different conservatórias. Other items cover career-progression unblocking, mobility transparency and the long-running dispute over the IRN's productivity-bonus formula.

Ministério da Justiça responds with a recruitment tape

The Ministério da Justiça (Ministry of Justice) rejected the union's accusation that the IRN was being used as a "political instrument" — a reference to the institute's public summary of an agreement signed on 2 March 2026 with six of the eight sector unions (STRN excluded), which carried salary increases backdated to 1 July 2025. Justice officials pushed back with their own recruitment tape: 165 new conservadores and 605 new oficiais hired across 2024 and 2025, with many of those classes already starting work in 2026.

STRN counters that the new hires sit well below the 3,010-position shortfall the union has documented, and that the March agreement leaves untouched the wage compression that pushed the union to call action in the first place.

What to watch this week

Expect adhesion data from the IRN on Monday afternoon, picket reports from STRN as the week progresses, and statements from the Ordem dos Notários (Notaries' Bar) and the Ordem dos Advogados (Bar Association) on the knock-on effect for conveyancing pipelines and inheritance filings. The strike ends at 23:59 on 13 June; the next signal will be whether STRN comes back to the table or rolls the action into a second week.